This invention relates to a facsimile machine capable of communicating with a host device.
A conventional facsimile machine capable of communicating with a host device, such as a host computer, can be set in a "printing mode" or a "transfer mode", and is configured to be set to one of the modes at the initial setting. In the printing mode, received signals including image data from the telephone line is demodulated by a modem, then the coded image data output from the modem is stored in an image memory. The stored image memory is later decoded by an image processing section, and recorded on recording paper by a recording section. On the other hand, in the transfer mode, the image data is transmitted from the image memory to the host device via an interface section.
When the transfer mode is selected at the initial setting, and if the host computer is not switched on, or the facsimile machine and the host computer are not connected by a cable, or if the host computer is not in a state in which it can receive the image data from the facsimile machine because it is busy in performing jobs on other applications, the facsimile machine will not respond to the calling facsimile machine or the printing mode is selected (the operating mode is switched to the printing mode) automatically, to receive the data.
In a conventional facsimile machine, if the transfer mode is selected at the initial setting and if the facsimile machine receives the image data from the telephone line in the state in which the host device cannot receive image data, the facsimile machine executes the receiving operation in the printing mode. This causes a problem that the host device cannot perform intended or desired processing on the data, such as conversion and display, and the data must be transmitted again after the host device becomes able to receive the image data for the desired processing.